Manfred In No Rush To Change MLB’s New Playoffs Format

The World Series heads to Phoenix on Monday night after the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers split the first two games in Arlington over the weekend. 

This week, one team will be crowned champion after a postseason that has drawn significant scrutiny for its format that saw MLB’s winningest teams — four with at least 99 wins during the regular season — ousted as the league continues embracing change to October baseball.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that this offseason the league will discuss potential changes to the new postseason format that began in 2022. “Enough has been written and said that we have to think about it and talk about it, but my own view is the format served us pretty well,” Manfred said ahead of Game 1 of the World Series.

Tony Clark, the executive director of the MLBPA, would like to see the six division winners of the 14-team postseason be in a better position to advance deeper into the playoffs. The Rangers and Diamondbacks are both wild card teams.

Manfred, however, disagrees. “One of the greatest things about the playoffs in baseball is [that] anybody can win,” he said. “It’s about the competition that takes place in the postseason. I don’t think what happened this year is all that out of line with history.”

It’s unclear when the aforementioned conversations about potential change could take place or whether there would be significant support for alterations to the 2024 playoffs. Manfred also said that two years was not a large enough sample size to make major conclusions about the format.